Blue
by elliott ashes
Summary: Spoilers for season six. Buffy's perspective on coming back as she deals with huge changes for her and her friends, such as figuring out her feelings for Spike and Angel, magic placing Willow in danger, and memories resurfacing about her time in the asylum. Will eventually be AU.
1. Hell

Blue  
A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fanfiction

**Setting**: Early season six. May be read as a companion piece to Red, though should make sense seperately as well.  
**Pairings**: Spike/Buffy/Angel love triangle  
**Themes**: Buffy's perspective on coming back, her memories of being in the asylum, her relationships, and watching her friends change. The plot will eventually be AU, but will stick fairly close to canon to begin with.

Blue  
Chapter One  
Hell

one.

Sharp edges and flames. The melted air distorts, making black rivers of the streets. The air damp with laughs like empty pits in dirt. The dirt. Her nails ache with blood. Warm wet down her hands. She smells iron on herself, rot. Clothes stiff and heavy as she walks. Her legs remember the movement, like a code. Or like cold; sunken into the roots of her bones, a pain the moves outwards through her nerves, forcing her forward.

Nothing here has meaning. Blank, black space closes on her vision, swarms her edges. She can't separate herself from anything around her. No senses, no sense. No self.

_I used to be someone, not just this body. _This body has no clear edges, no clear end.

The streets swallow her.

Evil laughs.

two.

"You're back, Buffy. You're really back."

She holds her sister close to her, feels wet cheeks against the neck. Her, Buffy's, neck. She is Buffy. She's back.

And she loves her sister. Love spreads through drugged insides. Slow. But faster than pain.

three.

She watches the water. The liquid listens to no one but gravity. It's only thought is movement. Flow and flow and flow, following itself back to the ocean. Down the holes, slinking through cracks until it reaches wholeness. Swimming through itself, boundaries dissolved, cycling, circling. Connected to the complete.

Her mouth, mouthing words. She breathes out sounds that don't reach her ears. The name, _Dawn, _connected to her sister, but only thinly. A long thread to follow, and she's can feel her energy draining. She didn't used to feel this... nothing. Cough syrup stick in all her limbs.

Water dashes the sink, smashes metal echoes. The pipes never run out. Water pours. Liquid white with movement.

Willow reaches a hand to turn off the tap. Squeak.

She (_Buffy_) tries to bring herself back into her own head. Back into the shape of her body: the signals moving through her eyes. The conversations floating through her ears.

_You're alive again. You have to start living again. _

The door opens and Xander announces the plumber. She makes herself turn around.

Heaven is over.

.

**a/n**: Thank you so much for reading my story! I hope you enjoy it so far, and it would mean a lot to me if you left a review to let me know what you think.


	2. Angel

Wow, thank you so much to **davis056**, **James Birdsong**, **TwoToGo**, and **BtheP** for the reviews! I really appreciate it!

I previously posted a version of this chapter, but I heavily edited this one and I think it's stronger now.

Blue  
Chapter Two  
Angel

one.

Headlights pool on the asphalt, igniting the road that takes her back to the town where she was born. The halfway point between Angel and Sunnydale.

Brightness flecks the wet road as light pollution bleaches the sky of stars. Through the rain-specked bus window, the world is upside-down.

She laces her fingers, still unused to the feeling of skin touching skin. Her body has become a foreign language. When she left this world, she did not intend to come back. This isn't her home anymore. She's forgotten the customs.

Xander offered to drive her – _Xander, _willing to take her to see Angel. Is it that obvious she's losing it?

She told him it was okay, he shouldn't miss work for her. That she'll be fine. That it feels like something she should do herself.

She focuses on the vibrant green of traffic lights, the static-patter of rain.

She hasn't cried since she's been back. This scares her.

two.

Angel says her name like a question. She nods. Her throat expels a laugh like a small shard of glass, an automatic response to the silence.

"You're... alive."

"So they tell me."

Angel is not a touchy person – vampire – but he hugs her. Like he's making sure she's solid. She cannot listen to his heartbeat, of feel any warmth from him. But the contact is reassuring. Not the strange ghost feeling when she touches her own skin.

The rain pours from the bus shelter roof. She closes her eyes and listens.

three.

She's grateful he doesn't expect her to say much. Sometimes he starts to ask a question, then changes his mind.

They walk the puddled streets, ostensibly patrolling. Though they both know there's nowhere near as many vamps here as Sunnydale or L.A.

She points towards the end of the street. The hedges her dad used to trim obsessively, standing in his shorts on the lawn, Dawn and her trying to get him to take them skating. She has not spoken to her father since she's been back, or for months before she died. Their conversations are friendly, the way people who barely know each other are friendly.

There is a light on, an orange square in the dark blue evening. In the kitchen, where her mom would be clearing the dishes. Or Dawn or herself, depending on the day and whether they were doing a good job with their chores. The curtain is drawn. The light is empty.

"That's my old house."

"I know," he says.

"Right," she says. Then: "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"How come you asked to meet here?"

He shrugs. He's never been good at looking casual. "I thought it might help to see something familiar. When I came back, and I saw you... that helped."

She gives a short nod. Waits for words to come, but they don't. They stand in the street, looking at each other.

And then he's kissing her. Something finally connects, her head unclouded, the signals register and she knows what to do. She kisses him back.

But a second later, he breaks it off. "I'm sorry," he says. "You don't need any more complications right now."

"It's okay," she says. The clouds are back, and it's almost a relief. Feeling real was stranger than she remembered it – and she remembers her life as pretty strange.

"And we already know how it would turn out between us."

"Yeah," she says. "I guess we do."

They walk for several hours. They don't see any vampires or demons. They talk rarely; when they do, it's about work.

He offers to drive her home.

"Oh, no, you have work, and –"

"So do you," he says softly.

"Not unless Slaying counts as a job."

"It's a pretty damn important one."

And then she blurts, "How did you do it? Get used to... being, again."

"When I came back from hell," he says.

"Yeah," she says.

He answers slowly. "It took a lot of time. The things I saw, and knowing what I did... it was easier not to think. I just wanted to function like an animal. But there were reasons to get better. The reasons I cared about the world in the first place... those were still there." The light and water of his eyes focuses on her.

She mumbles to herself. "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it."

"Sorry?" he says.

"Nothing.


End file.
